I tried to discuss these things in the http://voy.com/90094/ forum, but there were too many psychological defense mechanisms in play. Discussion was seen as an attack on LDS leaders and possibly also on political leaders. The psychological defense mechanisms included going into a discussion about it not being the job of LDS Church leaders to speak about politics at all, rather than addressing the ethical and moral issues that I brought forth. All in all, I found out that a discussion about standards and belief-sets/mind-sets that cause Evil is not possible on the Notes from Zarahemla Political Forum, and therefore I have moved these discussions here instead.

Dear Debbie, don't think for one minute that I do not appreciate your post "About that term, "faith"" http://voy.com/90094/7212.html . The reason for my long delay in responding is rather that it was so well worded that I did not know how to respond so that the response does the original post justice. Alas, I still don't.

But just looking at my own father and mother, I see two individuals who are both equally informed regarding the blatant crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of freedom and globalization by the world leaders as led by George Walker Bush and Tony Blair. My parents both understand that these leaders intentionally destabilize the world so they can scare us with nightmares of terrorists, etc. So they can divide and conquer. States as well as populations. Even the United States population. Both my parents see this, but they react differently. My mother, analogous to what you wrote concerning the choice of passivity, is of the opinion that one should ignore this crazy world and focus on one's private world, build one's personal future, etc. My father is on the other hand of the opinion that unless one speaks out concerning the evil one sees, one have a degree of complicity. Much like he, I and many others feel that the German people had a degree of complicity in the evil of Nazism. (The German people have "atoned" and felt shame for this up to about a decade ago, so if and when the U.S. and other complicit peoples are brought to "atone" for not speaking out, the shame might last for decades and affect generations. (That is, if they are not too proud to be able to feel shame.))

So, Debbie, I much appreciate that you feel likewise for the opportunity to dialogue. I have always felt like my father above, but the last years have helped me understand how ordinary loving decent devoted and idealistic people following the -- as they see it -- highest ethical and moral standards, perhaps even morally superior standards, as they themselves see it, can and could commit acts that once were and again likely will be universally denounced as evil crimes against humanity. I see how ordinary decent Germans could think that they were morally superior while conducting the day-to-day administration of genocide in Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

I feel that it is vital to see the standards and belief-sets/mind-sets that cause this evil. I.e. good people doing what they think is right out of love and devotion to family, country and religion can and does commit great evil because of perverted standards and belief-sets/mind-sets. Standards and belief-sets/mind-sets that cause Evil must be openly discussed. It is usually not people that are evil, but ideals and standards and ideas. And leaders who cause people to blindly follow perverted standards.

As an example of a person who is celebrated by his peers for his high standards while -- presumably following perverted ideals -- justifying murder and torture and various forms of slaughter of "illegal combatants," an invented category invented in order to give a pseudo-legal cover to a policy of summary execution, see LDS judge Jay Bybee http://ldsmag.com/people/030708jay.html , who did all this while Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, when he wrote the infamous torture memo to Alberto Gonzales, that the highest leaders of the U.S. have used for legal justification of behavior that is only topped by German gassing of unwanted elements, and then only in scale, because what is worse, being suffocated in a container or being gassed in a gas-chamber?

[Around December 2001, hundreds of Taliban prisoners of war were suffocated to death inside metal cargo containers where they were imprisoned after surrendering to Northern Alliance and U.S. forces. The U.S. and it's proxy forces are openly and knowingly violating the Geneva Convention by thusly and in other ways exterminating prisoners of war. Rightly so, this kind of conduct has been seen as uncivilized for hundreds of years. ``When the U.S. forces are not openly collaborating in the massacre of prisoners--as they did at the fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif--they are, at the very least, turning a blind eye to the activities of their hired killers. It was widely reported by the international media, including many American newspapers, that Northern Alliance commanders planned to kill non-Afghan POWs from Kunduz once CIA and U.S. Special Forces interrogators were through with them. U.S. military officers who oversaw the surrender of the city were well aware of this, and the U.S. government did nothing to stop it, making top officials complicit in the war crimes. . . . [ snip ] . . . "`After were finished talking to them,' said Syed Wasiqullah, a Northern Alliance officer in charge of Mr. Nasir and others, they're finished,'" he said, as he dragged his finger across his throat.'' (From one web site.) In Iraq, we have heard how ``60,000 Iraqis 'Disappeared' into US Camps'' -- http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8994.htm``Their families don't know where they've been held, what the charges are. And this is infuriating people... some of whom are angry enough to pick up a gun.'']

But there is no point reveling in all this evil that is done by people who yet again believe that they serve family, country and religion. By people who believe that they are the good ones, because they do all what they do with the best of intentions -- just like the Nazis -- and with love, loyalty and devotion to the very highest moral principles and ideals -- again just as the Nazis. Therefore, what needs to be discussed are those ideals and principles. And if our loyalties prevent us from this, then additionally we seriously need to re-consider our loyalties.

And what we should not do: It is very tempting -- indeed very Mormon -- to say that "N. N. will be judged for what N. N. did, come judgment day." Thinking that since N. N. caused great Evil, it is probable that N. N. will be punished at that time. But this ignores the fact that N. N. can be you and me acting out of the very best of intentions, and loyally and lovingly doing what is logical and obvious given the ideals, belief-set/mind-set and standards by which we live. Probably every person alive is capable of sending people off to the Gas Chamber, thinking that they are doing good, given the appropriate belief-set/mind-set. And this is because most of us want to do good! That is, the will to do good can cause very great evil to be done. Hence we MUST discuss standards/belief-sets/mind-sets that obviously cause Evil. It is the perverted standards/belief-sets/mind-sets that kill.... I don't think that Jay S. Bybee or even Adolf Hitler is/was inherently evil, but the perverted standards/belief-set/mind-set they believed in and live/lived by obviously is/were. We simply MUST discuss this. That is a moral imperative.

Meridian Magazine: Jay S. Bybee Named to Ninth Circuit Court http://ldsmag.com/people/030708jay.html This article shows a clean-cut Mormon with his family and with Attorney General John Ashcroft in November 2001, etc. According to Meridian Magazine, this [justifier of summary executions and torture] is "one of the finest constitutional lawyers in America" and "A Family Man". The search I made on http://ldsmag.com/ using Google for "Bybee" together with "torture" yielded zero hits.

So wrote Victor Marchetti, a former high-ranking CIA official, in his book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence.This is the first book the U.S. Government ever went to court to censor before publication. In this book, Marchetti tells us that there IS a "Cabal" that rules the world and that its holy men are the clandestine professionals of the Central Intelligence Agency. Paraphrasing, Marchetti:

This cult is patronized and protected by the highest level government officials in the world. It's membership is composed of those in the power centers of government, industry, commerce, finance, and labor. It manipulates individuals in areas of important public influence - including the academic world and the mass media. The Secret Cult is a global fraternity of a political aristocracy whose purpose is to further the political policies of persons or agencies unknown. It acts covertly and illegally.

"The main threat to Democracy comes not from the extreme left but from the extreme right, which is able to buy huge sections of the press and radio, and wages a constant campaign to smear and discredit every progressive and humanitarian measure." - George Seldes

"There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself." Daniel K. Inouye U.S. Senator

"Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." - Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1913)_________________Leif Erlingsson, Tullinge, Botkyrka, Sweden
A-TGSS (anti-totalt globalt slav samhälle / Anti-Total Global Slave Society)

Swedes are very individualistic. Actually that's why the LDS doesn't make progress here -- normally people will not bow to authoritarian systems whether religious or political. However I think that there are strong forces that wish to alter this, and that's probably part of the reason that the then Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was gunned down here in the city I live in, on a Stockholm street on his way home from a cinema with his wife, Lisbet on February 28, 1986. See for example http://karisable.com/palme.htm . Or search using ``"Olof Palme" murder'' in http://google.com/ . Apparently one of the persons that was innocently blamed was Lyndon LaRouche(!). Lyndon LaRouche comments in one of the search results using the search string I just mentioned that ``the principal suspect in the Palme murder would have been that international consort of weapons- and drug-traffickers popularly known as the ``Iran-Contra'' complex, of which the East Germany, Rostock-based weapons-trafficking was an integral part.'' ( http://larouchepub.com/lar/1995/carlsson_reply.html .)

THE TRUTH IS THE GREATEST ENEMY OF THE STATE

``If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.'' [ Paul Josef Göbbels ]

``See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.'' [ George Walker Bush ]

THANKS "Mary, quite contrary" for ``My hat is off to you!''. It is true that the most arrogant Americans I have been in contact with have been LDS. But unfortunately this is also the case with many Swedish LDS. I will not hide that LDS members have hinted that I am a very evil person, inspired by Satan, for telling the truth about the real Eternal War Agenda.

Frankly, President Hinckley not speaking out, not exposing evil, not helping the LDS to see through the lies, deception etc made me extremely uncomfortable. Many LDS said that the Prophet supports the war so therefore it is righteous. But the war was based on lies, I knew that for a fact. I didn't want to believe that President Hinckley supported a war based on lies. I wrote http://ldsvswar.lege.net/ and especially http://ldsvswar.lege.net/prove_it/ to show that President Hinckley could not possibly support this. But today I am not so sure anymore. Jay Bybee, while assistant to Alberto Gonzales, wrote the infamous torture memo. He is LDS. The CIA analyst who made the completely faulty assessment on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is LDS. LDS are in key places in DC. Including in the White House law office. LDS advise Congress on international affairs, etc. Condoleezza Rice's newest assistant at the State Department is LDS. And of course there's Orrin Hatch, Bob Bennett, Harry Reid and Mike Leavitt. Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, LDS, is considering a run for the US presidency in 2008. So there is definitely a "Mormon network" around political power in Washington. In March 2005 800 LDS met at a ballroom in the Georgetown Marriott for a meeting of the Brigham Young University Management Society, where their discussions included running the country. I today firmly believe that President Hinckley gets his inside information from misinformed LDS inside the circles of power. Either that or that he shares a goal that I do not share: That the goal of the US must be to preserve world dominance at any cost, war, deceit, lies, black propaganda, assassinations, torture, black-mail, political arm-twisting (see for example http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1576753018/ref=pd_sxp_f/104-2154310-2601545 "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins), etc. Either way, I am today confident that I do not have the same values as evidently does President Hinckley. I'm sorry if that is shocking, but I have to follow my conscience, and my conscience forbids me to just "follow the leader" in this.

In fact, I today believe that "secret combinations" of the radical Right like the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_SocietyJohn Birch society (sorry!) and others of that ilk are among the most potent enemies to civilization we have. (``[T]he FBI HQ main file on the JBS is 62-104401 and consists of about 12,000 pages. J. Edgar Hoover or his top subordinates referred to the JBS in FBI memos and reports as "extremist", "irrational", "irresponsible" and "lunatic fringe". ( Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:John_Birch_Society )) I am well aware that Ezra Taft Benson -- LDS president when I became a member -- was a John Bircher, and also a racist. Knowing as I do today what he really believed, I do not share those values.

You might wonder why, if I do not share values with the LDS prophets, I at all became LDS. I bought the religious package and I felt the burning in the bosom thing. I was even impressed with the anti-authoritan teachings of the early prophets, like especially John Taylor -- check out "The Gospel Kingdom"! Today I have to agree with the FLDS that the main LDS religion has apostasied from the earlier teachings. But I also agree with the http://cofchrist.org/Community of Christ, formerly RLDS, and with the people that published the http://ldsvstruth.lege.net/doc/nauvooexpositor.txtNauvoo Expositor on Friday, June 7, 1844, that already the founders of the whole LDS religion apostasied. I didn't stop there. I investigated more thoroughly than I ever did before the very foundation of the LDS religion, and like the former RLDS, now http://cofchrist.org/Community of Christ, I decided that it was built on a foundation of lies and deception. I am therefore no longer formally attached to the LDS organization, even though I study it with great interest due both to my extensive knowledge of it and the role I see it trying to play in both national and international politics. Along with http://insider-magazine.com/ChristianMafia.htm "The Fellowship"/The Christian Mafia at http://insider-magazine.com/ChristianMafia.htm (also see Jesus Plus Nothing at http://harpers.org/JesusPlusNothing.html ). I today consider the LDS "Mafia" among those extremely dangerous secret societies that threaten our freedom, liberty, etc. If you are familiar with George Orwell and his work "1984" you may get an idea of my feelings regarding the relationship between the LDS Church and reality. Or you can read my Parable About Truth at http://ldsvstruth.lege.net/ , that I wrote about a week before we formally and physically disassociated ourselves from the [LDS] Church. (Physically because we were never inactive. We just resigned while being fully active, because we/I wanted to make a statement through our actions, namely that we are not lazy etc, but we do not share values with the LDS.) Note that I do not deny my testimony, it's just that I have discovered that we humans can obtain a testimony of whatever we have a psychological need for -- that we are prone to interpret any spiritual experiences as proof for whatever belief we need to get proof for. This is how people end up in different religions, they ALL obtain a testimony (regardless of if that is the word they use) for their particular belief. And then we fight each other. I do today not subscribe to any particular theology and I follow my conscience I today believe that there is a spiritual reality and possibly a higher power/God but I think it is foolish for me to try to second-guess this power. I'll just follow my conscience, and let the consequences follow.

Theocracy: when religious fanatics run the government as if God died and left them in charge.

Posted: Tue, 2005 Jul 12 14:11:36 Post subject: In a thread in Swedish on the swedish part of the forum,

In a thread in Swedish on the Swedish part of the forum, about the Iran war already having begun, I just posted a long text in English about the polite crushing of dissent and truth that you may find interesting. I also recommend to scroll up and visit the links in this thread, as they are all in English: http://life.lege.net/viewtopic.php?p=38#38_________________Leif Erlingsson, Tullinge, Botkyrka, Sweden
A-TGSS (anti-totalt globalt slav samhälle / Anti-Total Global Slave Society)

Going to the bottom with the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the war criminals in charge: WTI : World Tribunal on Iraq : Home http://worldtribunal.org/main/ The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) is a worldwide undertaking to reclaim justice. It aims to record the severe wrongs, crimes and violations that were committed in the process leading up to the aggression against Iraq, during the war and throughout the ensuing occupation, that continue to be widespread to this day._________________Leif Erlingsson, Tullinge, Botkyrka, Sweden
A-TGSS (anti-totalt globalt slav samhälle / Anti-Total Global Slave Society)

In case loading the pictures takes too long time, here's the text I wrote at the end of http://life.lege.net/picturesays/: ``The blind leading the blind?
The Latter-day Saints are led by a "prophet" who have expressed his personal support for this war. And the support for the war among the LDS have been far greater than among the general US population, at least 70% in Utah. Hence "The blind leading the blind?" above. In the LDS Church I see the morally blind leading the morally blind -- indeed, I see the LDS Church making many of it's followers unable to take an independent moral stand. Too late and too few of the Latter-day Saints are now finally waking up, but most Latter-day Saints are still in denial -- like the sending of the above images illustrate -- and like their "prophet", Gordon B. Hinckley, when he expressed his personal support for the Iraq war in order to defend home and country (those were of course propaganda lies by the war hawks) in front of the whole Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was of course quite the diplomat about it, but most of the Latter-day Saints understood him to support the Iraq war, and this perception has never been corrected. Whereas when another LDS leader was interpreted to criticize the war, this was very soon corrected by the LDS Church.

The "follow the leader" message pounded at the Latter-day Saints in combination with moral blindness in "the leaders" makes Latter-day Saints especially vulnerable to moral blindness. As stated, to pass around imagery like the above is of course a denial-reaction. It's like suggesting that a serial killer is a great guy because he is passing out candy-bars to the neighborhood kids between kills. And as you can see in the brief "CNN footage" above, there is no shame in the killing, but pride. It feels good to kill, what a rush! ("... that was awesome, let's do it again!") The clean-cut all-American young guy gives killing the wounded a friendly face.''